The trick to reading Jeremy Rifkin’s latest work is to treat it less like a book and more like a mystical text. That’s because Rifkin, a prolific writer and the management guru most likely to be found at an Occupy sit-in, has synthesised so many ideas within it that laboring over the contradictions seems like missing the point.

The clue is in the book’s multiple titles. Capitalism has been our bright sun for two centuries, but as the human journey continues, technological advance driven by capitalism’s (ultimately) self-destructive quest for efficiency will serve to reduce the marginal cost of producing everything to near-zero, and a new star, called “the commons” will begin to attract us to its orbit.